The last couple of months have took me to some deep places. I didn’t know why it went there, but it did. I believe, it is part of a healing process. I took a long time to come out of this. Spent a lot of time in seclusion searching for answers. People don’t just want to see all the victories in your life. People like the victory in the end but then they will look at their own lives and they can’t comprehend it. How, why, when.. and so many other questions unanswered. Instead, they want to know your journey, how you came to be.
And it’s true. The bible says “seek and you shall find”. I believed in it. I spent my years searching and trying to reach the One. You’d think that Christians know what they are doing. As a matter of fact, being a Christian doesn’t mean you know God at all. You can be all there singing a great worship song, people cheered, people cried but you know nothing about your faith. You go out and do ministry, praying for people and helping the helpless, and yet your life is in a mess. You cry in bed at night, you plead to a God you think you know, or maybe you don’t even do any of these when you are on your own. Maybe sometimes you think you hear God and other times you’re not too sure anymore where is God.
Christians suffer too. They suffer the “silence of God”. They suffer the insecurity of a faith they believed in. Sometimes they don’t even believe in what they profess to believe in. Many of us will come to this stage of our lives. It is a time when you’re not OK anymore. I believe we will be driven to this place, where we need to review our journey. My faith in this season has been stretched.
I’ve been here. Not just once. But many times. Each time when my faith was being tested, my brain juice got stretched, I bolted. I ran straight back to my old ways of coping. Suddenly all the things you learned about God and teachings seems to fly out of your brain. Going back to the old was familiarity. When you are upset and can’t make sense of anything, all you want to do is to have fun and ease that knot you are experiencing. Some go back to old habits. Why does that happen you ask. It’s because I know how to exist there. I have more supporters there. I can chill and forget about what I can or not do. I let myself go. I can’t live up to the standards God set. I can’t deal with the nonsense of the church. They can’t even do the right thing! (so why should I??) I’m not perfect, I’m not God and to be human is to err!!
Yes. Some of us have been there. Going back to the old. I know one thing. The seed has already been planted. You did taste the good of God. You know, that He is good. You know that God is real. But just that, you didn’t have victory in your life. Victories cannot come without a fight. So, this time round.. I said “enough!”. I didn’t see the victory in my life, or they were short lived kind of thing. Something is not right. I believed in this Mighty God. God who delivers people. God who set them free. God who gives abundance. God who heals. God who hears prayers. I either go and find until He is found or I totally give up this idea of a God who so loved the world.
So my quest, took on a journey. The same testing came. Would I run to Him and trust in this God or do I bolt and give up again. The test is always in the form of a person. A person who is dear to you. Do you love God or man (woman). Do you love God or the things that this world offers. In other words, do you love God or yourself (fulfilling personal desires) Are you on the throne, or is He on the throne. That is the test.
I have spent the last 3 good years in His word and in His church. The stories was becoming real for me. Now is to experience the relativity of it when I am confronted with calamity. Can I actually hold on to these words as truths for myself. Am I willing to let go all my emotions, thoughts and human understanding and lean on just biblical words? Can I actually live in them? My thoughts is, I have already done it my way, bolted so many times, I am quite done with myself. I would like Him, the God I believe in, with all His mightiness to show me how to live in His way, as His child, as His family member.
Like all families, we have a different culture and sets of rules in each family. So God has His laws and rules about how to live a life according to His family ways. He has ‘high standards’? No, He doesn’t have high standards. We have lost our standards and living in poverty. We are living by the prince of the Air standards.
And you were dead in the trespasses and sin in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience – among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. Ephesians 2:1-3
We are living in such degraded lifestyles that has no morals, violating our own bodies, integrity and our sanctity. One won’t understand what this means until their trust and believe in a marriage or relationship has been violated. Their bodies raped. Being used. Hearts broken. Life taken. A carefree life, or a right to your body and doing whatever fancies you, promiscuity, is a direct reflection of a degraded life. A life that God does not want you to have.
God says, Be holy because I am holy. (1 Peter 1:16) Is it a high calling? No. It’s what He wants of you, to respect the body He created. You are not your own. You are your Maker’s treasure. It is the enemy that brought you down that low of yourself so that you feel so ashamed that you would hide from Him just as Adam and Eve hid from God when they did not follow God’s instruction. The enemy’s job is to get you away from God.
I asked God why do Christians keep failing. Many of us at some stage of our lives, we fall away from God, we give in to temptation. Why do we defile God in our weakness? You will find the answers in the life of His apostle Peter, the one who denied Jesus three times.
Not only he denied Jesus three times, you will find that he was also found sleeping three times in the garden of Gethsemane when Jesus went to wake them up to pray. Three times Jesus repeatedly asked Peter if he loved him. Peter was hurt being asked so many times. The thing is, the first time Jesus met them, He told them… “come and see”. They did. For a time, and saw the miracles He did. Then Jesus said again “come follow me”. (second calling) They went on to follow Him for three years. Learning about things He was teaching. Finally Jesus would ask again after His resurrection, (third calling) “come follow me” in other words, He is saying “would you follow me still?”
In our faith walk… we went to see what Jesus is all about. We went for the worship. We went for the prayers. Then we also went to see the miracles. And we celebrate our faith walk. It’s all good. Then as calamity comes into our midst, we are challenged if we can follow Him. So we braced the circumstances and pushed ourselves to grow our faith. We serve in church, we build, we became a part of a big family. But the testing will come on the third time. This time of challenge is normally when you have lost the faith and hope in Christianity, your church and someone “disappointed” you. This time, like after the resurrection, Jesus points to the cross and asks you again, “do you still want to follow me?”.
At the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” (Luke 22:42) Jesus, like a lamb was led to slaughter for a greater purpose. It’s not what He wanted but to submit to His Father’s plan. The way of the cross is submission to the will of the Father. Jesus is asking, are you willing to follow me as I have followed my Father’s will, denying myself and going to the cross for His greater purpose.
This third calling will happen in your faith walk. Are you willing to let go of the things that hinder your continuation in this journey. Nothing is hidden from the Lord. Those who choose to let go, and carry this cross, their fruits will be exponentially multiplied. Peter after that conversation with Jesus, became the Rock and no longer Simon. “Those who believed what Peter said were baptised and added to the church that day–about 3,000 in all.” (Acts 2:41)
Having said this, my friends, be careful you do not continue to run away to the point of no return – To be an apostate. For them there is no return. Toby Mac said “spiritual death happens one compromise at a time”. Do not take for granted that it’s okay to continue to sin while professing to be a Christian and praying for people and stumbling people at the same time.
“It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.” Hebrews 6:4-6
“For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.” Hebrews 10:26,27
By the way, after Jesus died… Peter went back to his fishing business. They were lost. As a matter of fact, even the rest of them wanted to join Peter. Your faith walk affects those around you. Peter went back to his old familiar place, doing what was familiar. That’s when Jesus saw them out in the boat and He called out to him. The third time. Read it in John Chapter 21.
It is not an ending to a journey that we look forward to, though we do. But it is this journey here whilst waiting for that ending that matters more. Is God calling you for the third time? My friends, what is it that you need to let go off? Is it worth more than the eternal life He is giving you? Remember, all things here on earth does not lasts. And there is an end to all these things.
I cannot run away like I used to. My third calling has come. I have to be holy because He is Holy. I have given up all things here on earth. Was it painful? Of course. Is it difficult? Of course. I have cried prostrating to God until I am nothing. But I know, I am trusting in Him that my victory is just round the bend! The very same victory that I read about in Bible is mine.
Let’s do this!!
❤ mamajenn